


Before You Go

by heavenlyshadows



Series: Let Me Go [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24386755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenlyshadows/pseuds/heavenlyshadows
Summary: "Peter, it's Tony. I know I told you it was ok if you wanted to go, but I lied. I need you to stay.  Please, bud, come back to me."
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Let Me Go [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725967
Comments: 3
Kudos: 202
Collections: Stories in which Peter Parker snaps in Endgame instead of Tony Stark.





	Before You Go

**Author's Note:**

> This is the happy ending to the Let Me Go series. Enjoy!
> 
> The title comes from the song Before You Go by Lewis Capaldi

Tony was the only one in the house when it happened. 

Everyone else - May, Pepper, and Peter’s friends - had gone out to enjoy the sun. 

Peter was in his room. The same place he’d been since they brought him home three weeks ago. 

Tony was trying not to be bitter. They won. Thanos and the Black Order were gone, and the half of the universe that had been snapped away was back. But it didn’t feel like much of a victory when Peter was in a coma. 

It was touch and go for a while. His heart was barely beating when Tony carried him through a portal to Wakanda, but it was enough until Shuri and Strange could fix him. The scars would never fully fade, and it would take a lot of work for him to be able to use his arm again, but his healing factor was doing its part. 

He would wake up. It was just a matter of when. 

Tony should have been happy just for that. 

“Peter, it’s Tony.” he had whispered one night. “I know I told you it was ok if you wanted to go, but I lied. I need you to wake up. Please, bud, come back to me.” He pressed a kiss to Peter’s hair as if his love would fix everything like it did in Morgan’s fairy tales. 

But this wasn’t a fairy tale. If it were, Peter wouldn’t be in a coma. He wouldn’t have used the gauntlet or even had a reason to in the first place. He would be working on projects in the shop with Tony and gone back to school with his friends. Morgan would have finally met the brother her dad had been talking about for so long and know that he was more than just a story. 

But this was real life, and it was shitty and unfair, and sometimes the hero didn’t make it to the end of the story.

That was why Tony was bitter. 

The one person he had done all of this for might disappear again, and there was nothing he could do.

Except, according to Pepper, take care of himself too.

“Tony, it isn’t going to do Peter any good if you're half dead when he wakes up.” she admonished. “Morgan and I are going to take May and the kids out on the lake, try and get their minds off everything for a bit. I know I can’t convince you to come with us,” She leaned down to kiss him and pulled away, her nose wrinkling. “But at least take a shower. You stink.”

“Really feeling the love, Pep.” he joked half-heartedly. 

“You know what I mean.” 

Leave it to Peter to choose the one time Tony left his room to open his eyes.

“Boss,” FRIDAY spoke through the kitchen’s speakers. “Mr. Parker is awake.” 

His cup of coffee dropped from his hand, the mug Morgan had given him last Father’s Day shattering all over the tile. He didn’t care. All he could think was  _ PetersawakePetersawakePetersawake _ . 

Peter was already halfway down the stairs; right hand white-knuckled around the railing and face contorted in pain. He had to stop one step from the bottom and catch his breath. When he saw Tony, he froze. 

“Hey, Mr. Stark.”

He was damn near sobbing as he crushed Peter in a hug. 

“Holy shit,” he whispered into the boy’s hair. _You didn’t hold him tight enough. If you had held him tighter, he wouldn’t have faded away._ Tony had made so many mistakes since he met the kid. _You pushed him away, you underestimated him._ _You loved him, but you didn’t tell him. Not enough._ But he wasn’t going to keep making them.

So he held Peter tighter until a grunt of pain forced him to pull away.

“Are you ok? Do you need me to get Strange?”

Peter shook his head, leaning heavily against the steps above him, and there was a tense pause before Tony spoke again. 

“Breathe, Peter.”

Another pause. Then he let out an aggressive exhale and slowly opened his eyes, loosening his death grip on Tony’s shirt but keeping his hand in place. 

“No, no, you don’t need to get him. I’m ok.”

He must have been able to see that Tony didn’t believe him because he rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, I’m fine.” 

He couldn’t win every battle, so he relented, sitting next to his son on the step. 

“Do you remember what happened?” he asked him.

“Yeah,” the boy’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “Yeah, I remember. Did it work?” 

Tony snorted. Of course, that’s what Peter was worried about. “Yeah, it worked. They’re all back.” he looped his arm around Peter’s shoulders. He still couldn’t quite believe it. “I’m so proud of you.” 

He leaned his head down, so it rested against Peter’s, and he was so overwhelmed with relief that he jumped when FRIDAY spoke. “Boss, Mrs. Stark would like me to inform you that she and Mrs. Parker are back with the children and that ‘you better be decent.’”

“I’ll get right on that, thanks, Fri.” Tony griped. He was smiling, but it slid off his face when he realized that Peter had gone stiff. “Bud? What’s wrong?”

“May’s here?” he asked.

“Yeah, she and your friends have been staying here while we were waiting for you to wake up.”

The kid’s eyes went even wider. “They’re all here? How long have I been asleep?” 

“You’ve been in a coma for almost a month, Pete.” 

Peter sighed, his head falling into his good hand. His left arm hung useless at his side, the scorched skin flexing in a clearly painful way. 

“He’s going to have a hard time.” Strange had said on their first night back in New York. “He’s going to be angry and scared, and everything in between, but don’t give up on him. Don’t let him push you away.” his eyes were dark with something like regret, and Tony remembered that once, Strange had been the patient instead of the doctor. 

“May’s going to kill me.” Peter groaned now.

Tony winced. It was a little too soon for him to be making jokes like that. 

“Yeah, probably, but I think first she’ll- hey, woah, woah what do you think you’re doing?” 

Peter was trying to stand up, making it about ten steps before he collapsed. Tony barely had enough time to catch him before he face-planted on the floor.

“I need to see them.” 

He tried to take a few more steps with the same result.

“Kid, listen, I’ll tell them you’re awake. Let’s just go back upstairs and-”

“No,” he was gripping the back of a dining chair so hard Tony thought the wood would snap, but his face was set in determination. “I need to see them now. You can either help me, or I can go by myself.” 

Jesus, this kid.

Heaving a sigh, Tony ducked under the kid’s arm and slowly walked him out towards the dock. “I swear you’re giving me more gray hairs than I need at my age.”

“Whatever,” Peter retorted. “I think someone else has been doing my job just fine, old man.”

“Ouch.” 

“What’s her name?” Tony barely heard him as they struggled down the back steps, sharp gasps of pain, and quickly mumbled apologies now on the list of things Tony never wanted to hear out of Peter’s mouth again. 

“Morgan,” he said quietly. 

As easily as he could read Peter, Peter could read him, and he knew there was no hiding his regret. 

“Tony, I never expected you to put your life on hold for me. I didn’t want you to. Really, I’m glad you moved on.” 

He hadn’t. Not really. 

Tony spent the first year after the Snap stuck, the realization that he would be mourning Peter for longer than he knew him sat on his chest like a brick, and finding out Morgan was coming had been the only thing that could snap him out of it. Those two pink lines became a life raft in an ocean where he had been drowning, and she hadn’t replaced the child he had lost, but she kept Tony afloat until he could swim on his own.

He didn’t say that to Peter, though. 

“Doesn’t change how much I wish you could have been there,” he sighed, shifting the weight of Peter’s arm across his shoulders. “I can’t wait for you to meet her. She already loves you.” 

Peter stumbled, mystified. 

“What, you didn’t think I was gonna let her forget about her big brother, did you?”

It had been a struggle to keep Morgan out of Peter's room since they brought him back, but Tony couldn’t bring himself to be too frustrated with it. One night when he was returning to Peter’s room after a shower, he had found Morgan already there, curled up against Peter’s side and telling him a story about none other than himself. 

Even if Tony had tried to forget him, it would have been impossible. 

Tributes to Spider-Man had popped up everywhere, multiplying by the dozens after the second snap. Morgan had gotten a kick out of it the first time she’d seen one, graffiti spray-painted on the brick of an old book store a few weeks ago. “Daddy, Daddy, look, Petey’s famous!”

_ Petey’s a hero.  _

“Daddy!” as if she had been taken right out of his head, Morgan came sprinting up from the docks, Pepper, May, Ned, and MJ following close behind. 

Everything May was carrying dropped out of her arms when she saw Peter, and she clapped her hands over her mouth and started to cry. Ned and MJ didn’t seem to be fairing much better.

“Peter?” May asked.

“Hey, guys.” 

He stepped away from Tony just in time for his aunt to catch him in a hug. 

“Oh my god, I can’t believe it you’re here.” May sobbed.

“Yeah, I’m here.” 

They collapsed into the grass, Ned and MJ falling to their knees next to them, and as Michelle pulled Peter into a hug, Tony could hear her swearing at him.

“I swear Parker, if you ever put me through that shit again-” 

“I’m sorry I-”

“Don’t.’ she cut him off. “I’m just happy you’re ok.”

And he would be. 

He made his recovery faster than any normal person, but that didn’t mean it was easy. There were days when he pulled on a hoodie and refused to come out of his room, disgusted with his scars and his arm that, even after months of physical therapy, still wasn’t back to normal. These were the days Strange had talked about. When the therapy with Sam wasn’t helping. When he was angry and tired, and he just wanted to give up. 

On these days, Peter tried to remember why he used the gauntlet in the first place because as many bad days as there were, there were twice as many good ones.

He and Tony went down to the lab and worked on their suits. For the time being, they were virtually in retirement, but if a time came when the world needed the Avengers again - because they both knew there would be - they would be ready. 

Peter finally met Morgan, and just as Tony thought, they were thick as thieves. Like she had for Tony when she first came into the world, she kept Peter afloat on the hard days. Peter introduces her to Star Wars because, of course, Tony couldn’t do that without him there, and they fell asleep halfway through Phantom Menace, Peter’s arm tucked around his sister’s shoulders. 

Ned made it his mission to catch the two of them up on all the lego sets they had missed, and Tony lost track of how many times he walked into the living room to find Ned, Peter, and Morgan on the floor with a new set while MJ sat behind them, her face shoved in a book. Each day bled into the next, and it was okay because they had time.

Peter eventually graduated high school, only a few weeks behind his friends to make up for all the months he missed during recovery. It wasn’t the cap and gown ceremony everyone else got, but Tony still cheered when Peter walked down the driveway to the mailbox for his diploma. He helped him and his friends pack their cars as they got ready to leave for college. Ned and Peter at MIT and MJ at Harvard. It was the beginning of an era for them and the end of one for Tony.

He and Peter talked on the phone every day, and as the kid rambled about his life in Massachusetts, he seemed more like the Peter he had been before Thanos. He seemed happy.

When he moved back to New York after graduation, he shadowed Pepper and prepared to take over the company when she retired.

He bought a ring, and after months of procrastinating and freaking out, he finally asked MJ to marry him. They got married at the cabin the following summer, and if Tony cried, no one said anything. Though he nearly had a heart attack when the kid told him he was going to be a dad.

They were in the lab, as they tried to be every Friday night, and Tony could practically feel the anxiety rolling off of him. 

“Alright, kid, spit it out,” he said, and instead of speaking, the kid pulled a sonogram photo out of his wallet and slid it across the table towards him.

_ Holy shit _

“Is this real?” Tony asked stupidly.

“Yeah, grandpa, it’s real.” Peter snorted. 

Tony had yanked him into a hug, and he did it again ten months later when he came out of the delivery room with a baby in his arms. 

“His name’s Ben,” he whispered. “Benjamin Anthony Parker.” 

  
  
  


Morgan graduated, and she and Peter run Stark Industries together liked Tony could only have dreamed they would in the five years Peter was gone. Peter was the first person Morgan came out to when she found out she was bisexual, and he was the first person at their door with ice cream and Star Wars after her first girlfriend broke her heart. They led the New Avenger’s initiative side by side with Harley Keener, and while Peter wasn’t as committed to Spider-Man as he had been before when the next war came, and he had to fight, he was ready. 

It scared Tony sometimes how fast his children were growing up. 

But he knew that he had to let them go, that he had to trust them to live their own lives and know that if they needed him, he was only a phone call away.

So he did. 

Ten years went by.

And then ten more.

And it was good.


End file.
